With comments due to the FEC by Friday on its proposed regulations of campaign finance activity on the Internet, I still have not seen any comments submitted from the leading campaign finance organizations on the topic (for example, here is the Campaign Legal Center’s page on the topic, with no mention of any filed comments). Back on May 2, I wrote: “One interesting observation from the Post article: ‘Scott Thomas, the FEC’s Democratic chairman, said it has yet to hear from the authors of the 2002 campaign finance reform legislation or any of the prominent watchdog groups on the disclaimer issue.’ We really haven’t gotten any of the usual suspects to submit a comment yet,’ Thomas said.” I think it is no mystery why: an online coalition of left and right bloggers are arrayed against it, and relentless in their opposition to any regulation of the blogosphere.” Paul Ryan responded to this comment noting that there was still a month to go before comments were due.
Now, there are just days to go before comments are due. The fact that the comments have not yet been posted may reflect the tremendous political pressure that these groups will face should they decide to advocate any kind of regulation, even (as I have advocated) the modest requirement that bloggers who are paid by campaigns disclose this fact on their blogs.
I have enabled comments.